Week 13: Looking through the Camera

SJGELA students had the opportunity to visit public television and radio channel, Canal 3, right in our own city of Cuernavaca.

By Leanna Millan

This week SJGELA students had the opportunity to focus more intently on the affects and power of Mexico’s mass media. It has been a topic touched on throughout our semester with several of the groups that we have met commenting on their lack of visibility in government controlled media outlets but it was only this week that we had the opportunity to personally meet with ‘Canal 3’, a non-governmental television and radio station. After hearing all semester about the governments control on published points of view, current events, public opinion, etc. it was refreshing to finally hear from a media source whose end goal was to give space to those voices that have been silenced.

Ivonne Velasco, Assistant Director of ‘Canal 3,’ took time out of her busy schedule to not only provide us with technical explanations of the different studios but more importantly with personal testimony. It was in that, in her personal experiences and the experiences of other journalists that we gained the most – gained useful knowledge of the extent to which the Mexican government has been guilty of censuring its people. An interesting fact: Mexico has recently topped the list of one of the most dangerous countries for journalists to work.

This visit coupled with an analysis of historical Mexican movies in this one week allowed us to fully understand the impact of media on not only public opinion of social movements and communities but also gender roles and relations. Los medios de communincacion [mass media/media sources] so intrinsically continue the cycle of discrimination that it is hard to see or even analyze without the extra push from our professors and visits.